July 2011 | No. 111 Your FREE Guide to the NYC Jazz Scene nycjazzrecord.com Benny Carter Souvenir of Benny Freddy Cole • Zeena Parkins • psi Records • Event Calendar Is it getting hot around here? The usual East Coast jump from chilly post-winter to scorching full summer (otherwise known as spring - guess it really can hang New York@Night you up the most) has occurred, buoyed by last month’s slew of festivals. A nice 4 perk to summer in the city is how jazz gets to come out of the basements and dark rooms and get some sun, not to mention larger-than-usual crowds. There are Interview: Freddy Cole shows in various parks and the city’s open spaces this month; check our Event 6 by Andrew Vélez Calendar for places to tan while soaking up some jazz. But jazz is still an indoor, night-time music. Our Coverage this month will Artist Feature: Zeena Parkins take you all around the city. The late Benny Carter (On The Cover) was a legendary 7 by Kurt Gottschalk musician and composer and will be fêted at the annual Jazz in July celebration at 92nd Street Y. We have canvassed a number of his colleagues for remembrances of On The Cover: Benny Carter this giant. Vocalist/pianist Freddy Cole (Interview) is long out of the shadow of 9 by Alex Henderson his brother, releasing albums regularly and appearing to great acclaim all over the world, including Jazz Standard this month. Zeena Parkins (Artist Profile) is part of Encore: Lest We Forget: a ‘long’ line of harp improvisers and works in all number of creative environments; 10 Juini Booth John Jenkins this month she is at Blue Note and The Stone with different groups. by Sean O’Connell by Donald Elfman In between using this gazette as a sunhat or a fan or a decoration to that spiffy sand castle, take a gander at the rest of our features: an Encore on bassist Juini Megaphone VOXNews Booth, Lest We Forget on John Jenkins, Megaphone by Ken Vandermark and Label 11 by Ken Vandermark by Suzanne Lorge Profile on saxist Evan Parker’s psi Records. We also continue the season of Festival Reports with missives from Canada (FIMAV), Germany (Moers) and right here Label Spotlight: Listen Up!: (Vision). And at this point, we surely don’t need to remind you about the CD 12 psi Records Matt Mitchell Reviews and packed Event Calendar, indoors and out. by Stuart Broomer & Ben Stapp Summer in the city is about a lot more than gritty necks. It’s about seeing jazz in shorts, skirts, tanktops, sundresses, flipflops, the temperature of the city rising Festival Report: FIMAV • Vision • Moers to equal the heat of the music. Yowza, where’s the iced tea? 13 We’ll see you out there... CD Reviews: Russ Lossing, Django Reinhardt, Gerald Clayton, Laurence Donohue-Greene, Managing Editor Andrey Henkin, Editorial Director 14 Thomas Heberer, Ari Hoenig, Louis Hayes, Ken Vandermark and more Benny Carter (Photograph © 1994 Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos.) 36 Event Calendar On the cover: In Correction: In last month’s Cover story on Dee Dee Bridgewater, the recording Club Directory year for her album Red Earth was missing in the Recommended Listening; it was 41 recorded in 2006. In the Artist Profile, David S. Ware was mistakenly said to have had liver failure and an eventual transplant; it was actually his kidneys. Miscellany: In Memoriam • Birthdays • On This Day 43 Submit Letters to the Editor by emailing [email protected] US Subscription rates: 12 issues, $30 (International: 12 issues, $40) For subscription assistance, send check, cash or money order to the address below or email [email protected]. The New York City Jazz Record www.nycjazzrecord.com Managing Editor: Laurence Donohue-Greene To Contact: Editorial Director & Production: Andrey Henkin The New York City Jazz Record Staff Writers 116 Pinehurst Avenue, Ste. J41 David R. Adler, Clifford Allen, Fred Bouchard, Stuart Broomer, Thomas Conrad, New York, NY 10033 Ken Dryden, Donald Elfman, Sean Fitzell, Graham Flanagan, Kurt Gottschalk, United States Tom Greenland, Laurel Gross, Alex Henderson, Marcia Hillman, Terrell Holmes, Robert Iannapollo, Francis Lo Kee, Martin Longley, Suzanne Lorge, Laurence Donohue-Greene: Wilbur MacKenzie, Gordon Marshall, Marc Medwin, Russ Musto, Joel Roberts, [email protected] John Sharpe, Elliott Simon, Jeff Stockton, Celeste Sunderland, Andrew Vélez, Ken Waxman Andrey Henkin: [email protected] Contributing Writers General Inquiries: [email protected] Duck Baker, Mike Chamberlain, Anders Griffen, George Kanzler, Advertising: [email protected] Matthew Miller, Sean O’Connell, Francie Scanlon, Ken Vandermark Editorial: [email protected] Contributing Photographers Calendar: [email protected] Lena Adasheva, Jim Anness, Salvatore Corso, Scott Friedlander, Peter Gannushkin, Martin Morissette, Alan Nahigian, Susan O’Connor All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission strictly prohibited. All material copyrights property of the authors. THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | July 2011 3 NEW YORK @ NIGHT There is something immediately gripping about the The summer edition of the Festival of New Trumpet speed, grace and unerring touch of Warren Wolf at the Music (FONT) was stripped down to a mere three vibraphone. Clearly this isn’t lost on Bobby Watson, nights, but opened fittingly enough with a memorial Christian McBride, Jeremy Pelt, Willie Jones III and concert for trumpet innovator Bill Dixon. The concert others who’ve hired the young Baltimore native and - held Jun. 3rd, just 13 days before the first anniversary new Mack Avenue Records signee. That Wolf also plays of his passing, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea piano and drums on a high level - as documented on - featured a sextet of musicians who had worked with his recent self-release Warren “Chano Pozo” Wolf - the master, appropriately including a quartet of makes him an even more unusual find. Keeping strictly trumpeters. It was the brass (Taylor Ho Bynum, Stanton to vibes at Jazz Standard (Jun. 9th), Wolf brought on Davis, Stephen Haynes and Wadada Leo Smith) that board pianist Lawrence Fields, bassist Eric Wheeler opened the show with a quartet improv before the full (subbing for Kris Funn) and drummer John Lamkin for band played Bynum’s “That Which Only You Could an inspired one-nighter. The second set commenced Do”, named for a Dixon instruction for improvising. with the midtempo “Soul Sister”, gliding and funky in Davis introduced his gentle bop piece “Play Sleep”, a ’70s McCoy Tyner vein. Wolf continued with “Para which he played with the rhythm section (bassist Mejor o Peor” (“for better or worse”), a fine jazz ballad, William Parker and drummer Warren Smith), followed which grew into more of a rock power ballad by the by Bynum’s “Woods”. It was a casually friendly outro. “I Surrender Dear” started at a strutting evening, remembering not just Dixon but time spent in trad-jazz pace and after Wheeler’s three able choruses each other’s bands or playing with George Russell and Wolf delivered the goods: a set of rousing stop-time others. What might have seemed odd about the setlist breaks and a virtuoso cadenza, the set’s defining was actually quite astute: it wasn’t until the final piece moment. Strayhorn and Ellington capped it off: “Lush that they played a Dixon composition and then Life”, initially a vibes/piano duo, led to a breakneck interpolated within an arrangement by Haynes. For an “Caravan”, powered by Lamkin’s galloping swing. artist who preached individuality, it only made sense. The first-rate piano solo left one wondering when “When an artist like Bill dies, what do we do?” Haynes Fields will throw his hat in the ring as a leader. No asked the audience, by way of answering the implied grand revelations here, but solid music-making, deep question. “Do we play the pieces? Are there pieces to in the tradition, from a highly promising group. play?” The response was implicit in the music. - David R. Adler - Kurt Gottschalk P h s o s t e o : n L n e A n a m i A J d y a b s h o t e o v h a P Warren Wolf @ Jazz Standard Bynum, Smith, Davis and Haynes @ Rubin Museum On Miles Okazaki’s first two recordings, Mirror There isn’t a sound on Earth that could be mistaken (2005) and Generations (2009), the leader’s guitar wasn’t for Peter Brötzmann’s saxophone. Too metallic for an the main focus. Rather, it was part of a larger ensemble elephant, too organic for a foghorn, it is the sonic fabric woven by three saxophones, bass and drums, equivalent of a comet: you can’t actually hear it, just even vocals on the latter disc. Premiering a third the burn in its wake. Such was the insistent opening of volume of original music, Figurations, at The Jazz an inventive quartet made, as fours are, from a pair of Gallery (Jun, 4th), Okazaki went a different route, twos. Opening his Lifetime Achievement night at the scaling back to a quartet with Miguel Zenón (alto sax), Vision Festival Jun. 8th, stage left was Brötzmann and Thomas Morgan (bass) and Dan Weiss (drums). Here Eric Revis, stage right another horn/bass duo, Joe the guitar was well out in front as a solo voice and McPhee and William Parker. The fact that there is an Okazaki’s tumbling, accelerating, pointedly unstable extraordinary amount of power in his playing goes so phrases seemed to connect with Weiss’ drumming on a completely without saying that that’s all anyone ever molecular level (a function of their work together on says. Such that when he began his duo with Jason Weiss’ Jhaptal Drumset Solo and other projects).